“We had lots of opportunities unfortunately we missed. Agriculture was neglected by all of us, both government and people,” Dr. Abdulrahim Omar, Manager of Kurdistan Region’s ministry of agriculture told Rudaw.
“Kurdistan was largely focusing on oil,” he added.
For many years the Kurdish region was considered the bread basket of Iraq due to its fertile land and agreeable climate. But years of war and recent exploration of oil put agriculture in the backburner and farmers abandoned their land in droves for city life.
Now that the region is struggling with a severe financial crisis due to a sharp decline in oil prices and budget cuts from Baghdad, the government is turning to agriculture as an alternative and more reliable source of income.
The failed economy does not mean the Kurdistan Region has no alternatives, Kurdish Prime Minister said at a recent private sector conference in Erbil.
“We have plans to promote other financial sectors such as agriculture, industry, tourism, transportation and communications to replace oil and gas and we will do whatever it takes to put these plans into practice.” Barzani said.
The ministry of agriculture welcomes the new government policy to revive the sector, arguing that previous policies caused the neglect of agriculture and abandonment of farmlands by their owners for government jobs.
“Even before Daesh (ISIS), Kurdish farmers have left their lands and decided to become Peshmerga or guards in parks, malls and new buildings to have a monthly payment and live in the cities,” said Omar of the ministry.
Official data suggests that of 40 percent arable land in the Kurdistan Region only 16% of people maintain farming whereas the figure was 67 percent before the economic boom of recent years.
Masoud Osman, 43, was a farmer at Girda-Rash village near Makhmour but left his farm in 2007 to become a guard at one of Erbil’s shopping malls.
Osman and his family of seven live in a rented home in one of the city’s poor neighborhoods where he said that the only benefit of moving to the city was a better school for his children.
Now he has decided to return to his village and farm his land.
“We will prepare the land to grow wheat and barley,” he told Rudaw. “The challenges must be a lot but we have no other option than restart the business. With the economic crisis and late payment going back to the old job is the best thing to do.”
The financial crisis means civil servants and some employees in the private sector were not paid for months and only recently did the government start payments with considerable cuts.
Experts believe that Kurdistan has what it needs to revive and run a robust agricultural sector such as water, land, skills and human resources.
“We have hard-working experienced farmers, agriculture experts as well as fertile lands but all of we need is a chain to hold them together,” Plant Physiologist Dr. Kawa Abdulkarim from Salahadin University’s college of agriculture explained. “The problem is the lack of a system.”
The Kurdish government appears to have heeded this advice as it decided recently to link the Ministry of agriculture to the Ministry of Education to enhance farmer skills and knowhow.
“The main theme of the protocol is that from now on we will use academic research conducted by colleague of agriculture to make plans for this sector,” said Khals Ahmad, chief of staff in the Ministry of Agriculture.
According to Ahmad the protocol is “practical” and has the potential to directly influence the ability of farmers by giving necessary advice.
“The college of agriculture has the science and we are the implementation body, so together we will come out with better plans to restore agriculture sector,” he added.
